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Geoponĭci

γεωπονικοί). The ancient writers on agriculture; for instance (among the Greeks), the philosopher Democritus, and in later times, Xenophon, in his Oeconomicus. No other Greek works of the kind have come down to us, except the collection called Geoponica. This consists of twenty books, and contains extracts from writers of the most widely distant periods. The compiler was a Bithynian, Cassianus Bassus, who lived about the middle of the tenth century A.D., and undertook the work at the suggestion of the emperor Constantine VII. He based it upon a collection of extracts made by a certain Vindanius Anatolius. Agriculture was held in high esteem by the Romans, and the subject was in consequence a favourite one with their men of letters. A number of their works on it have come down to us: the Res Rustica of the elder Cato , a similar work by the encyclopaedic scholar, Marcus Terentius Varro, the Georgica of Vergil; and after Christ the writings of Columella, Gargilius Martialis, and Palladius. The Georgica of Vergil arè in verse; as is one book of Columella. See Beckh, De Geoponicorum Codicibus Manuscriptis (1886); and the work by Gemoll (1887). See Scriptores Rei Rusticae.

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